Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/792

752 cells dehiscing laterally, connective produced, apiculate. Female flower: Perianth short, cupular, hyaline. Carpels 2–6, sessile; styles long or short; stigma large, obliquely peltate, crenate; ovule solitary, pendulous, orthotropous. Ripe carpels usually 3 or 4, sessile or stalked, curved, oblong or oblong-reniform, slightly compressed, tubercled or crenate or smooth on the back, beaked by the projecting style. Seed pendulous; testa membranous; embryo cylindric, the cotyledonary end bent into a short coil.

1. Z. palustris, ''Linn. Sp. Plant.'' 969.—Stems very slender, much branched, leafy throughout, often forming dense masses, 3–14 in. long. Leaves opposite or subwhorled, very slender, ½–3 in. long, filiform, flat. Flowers sessile or very shortly pedicelled. Fruiting carpels 3 or 4, about $1⁄12$ in. long, stipitate or almost sessile, curved, smooth or very obscurely crenate on the back; styles from half to almost as long as the carpels.—''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 237; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 280; Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst.'' xxviii. (1896) 498.

Very slender submerged vrater-plants; stems filiform, branched. Leaves alternate or the floral ones opposite, filiform, sheathing at the base; sheaths broad, stipular. Flowers minute, axillary, diœcious or rarely monœcious, solitary within the dilated sheathing bases of a pair of floral leaves. Male flowers shortly pedicelled. Perianth very minute, of 3 hyaline scales. Anthers 2 or 3, united by their backs and forming a solid column resembling a single anther; each anther 2-celled, dehiscing longitudinally. Female flowers sessile or shortly pedicellate. Perianth of 3 hyaline segments longer or shorter than the carpels. Carpels 3, distinct, sessile or shortly stipitate, narrowed into a short or long style; stigma oblong or spathulate; ovule solitary, pendulous. Ripe carpels usually 3, oblong, coriaceous, indehiscent, tipped by the persistent style. Seed oblong; testa membranous; embryo with a thick obtuse radicle and tapering involute cotyledonary end.